What would Jason Statham do........part deux!

ITuesday night down at Enfield Gamers was the latest installment of the Zombiecide narrative campaign.

Following on from last time out PROD was missing one of its main agents provocateur whilst COCS had forgotten to bring the master spreadsheet. As such and with what looked like a relatively grab the objectives mission in front of us we did everything a bit half arsed on both the co-operation and planning fronts.

As such the zeds had the chance to bite back and did so....hard!

Kitting up early doors I went particularly Gun-Fu and most of us were fairly maxed out pretty quick. 

Jon / Jason picked up a chainsaw and went all red mist. Unfortunately it must have running on vapours as his dice were shocking and a bonus zombie turn saw him go down quicker than a Deathrace extra. It must have been a stunt double....obviously!

Charlie / Ned meanwhile went around assembling a pack of four dogs which once he'd found a second, fully fueled, chainsaw turned him into psycho-tramp flinging 11 dice in combat.

Unfortunately our lack of focus soon meant that the zeds were coming thick and fast while we scrambled for the last two objectives. Psycho-tramp carved a path with the rest of us in support but an Abomination had turned up and we hadn't the means to take him down.

Finally sharpening up a gap appeared between mobs and we went for it....only for a bonus zombie move to shut us down and see us swamped.

Unable to Psycho-tramp our way through all but one of us were munched for a total cast wipeout, or at least what should have been. 

I've mentioned before that I'm not sure about the whole Zom-vivor thing. I get that you're basically "on the turn" and see the extra facet to the game but it doesn't quite sit right with me personally. There are two strands to my thinking;

1. It feels like you're being rewarded for failure. Several times now a Zom-vivor has done the necessary damage and pulled victory from the jaws of Zom.

2. Surely the survivors wouldn't be overly trusting of thier newly shambling buddies. That's quite a leap of faith.

For the campaign we decided that a Zom-vivor will spend D3 games "on the turn", including the bitey one, before having to be put out if there misery.

Personal choice but I'd rather pick up a new character rather than let my personal hygiene go so drastically.....even as a wargamer :)

What would Jason Statham do?

Evening people.

Last night was the latest instalment of Enfield Gamers narrative Zombiecide campaign. With a few extra bodies in the mix there were seven of us playing, which  gave scope for a touch of in-cooperative play ;)

While Mr C and Shado represented the Committee Of Cooperative Statistics (COCS) myself and Shaun established the Peoples Republic of Do-What-You-Want (PROD) ;) Soon it was a classic battle of stats vs gut feeling with our three compatriots torn between each manifesto. Toe the statistical line or stick it to da' Man (dice gods). 

Snowy Leopards!! ahem.......

The rally crys were much stronger from PROD and soon focused on the cinematic theme of the game. Jon was playing Rick, who is basically Jason Statham so up went the cry "What would Jason Statham do?". Damien was playing Derek who was quickly given a midlands accent, while I had Woody Harrelson who legged it to the pimp mobile and started shooting.

Back to the game the scenario turned tough quickly with COCS sneaking through the buildings, both female characters, while PROD jumped into a patrol car performing doughnuts and drive-bys with wild abandon. In the end it was the PROD pro-mayhem agenda that somehow won through whilst COCS got jumped by a horde of walkers given bonus actions, while Jon / Jason watched on with a steely look of revenge in his eye!

Following a final flurry of road-rage and flying lead we just about edged the scenario though Rob died once, becoming a Zom-Vivor and Mr C died twice, becoming worm food.

All in all a good night and a highly enjoyable game. I still think drive-bys are a bit strong and not sure about Zom-Vivors, surely the other guys would just cap them?, but all good gory fun that adds spice. There was even talk of assigning by characters by looks and personality, now there's a can of worms!!

Snowy Leopards!!

Running with the Hordes

Evening people,

The LOTR / SAGA Goblin Levy have just been washed so hopefully that should be another fistful of PPs tomorrow night and a completed 6 point force. I've really enjoyed this project, and especially painting the LOTR figures to the point that I'm already looking to expand the force.

An unarmoured Moria Troll with spear is 95% sourced from E-Bay while I've also been eyeing up some Warg Riders, they're just such lovely figures! I also dropped into GW Enfield on the way home from footy this afternoon to do a bit of research as I've also been eyeing up the Hunter Orcs, foot and mounted, to add a bit of variation to the force.

Going back to my recent rant, the newer figures are cool but I'm not sure why they're "worth" £5 and £7 a box more for the same number of figures :/ What was really cool was the chat that I had with Dan, the Manager, about what I was doing with them and what I was looking at. He mentioned the Half-Ogres in the Harad and Umbar range, that I wasn't even aware of! Checking them out on the website lead to a few more possibles;

How good are these? Excellent add on / command figures. Nice call Dan, really enjoyed the chat, you really got what I was after. If only a felt the same way about your employer.

Unfortunately Wednesday was another bust for Star Wars: EotE but instead we cracked the seal on Zombiecide: Prison Break. Setting up the tutorial we expected a fairly easy run breaking into the prison. Yeahh........not so much!!

A first turn Abomination didn't really help but the real step up is with the missions. As you would expect with a Prison security is paramount so we needed to go find the key-card....to let us into the exercise yard full of shamblers. On the run pretty quickly we soon learned the power of the drive-by / zombie-ram which quickly drove up the kill count, and a such the Z-count!

The other twist are the Zombi-vor rules. Two of our guys went down only to get back up wild-eyed and suddenly far more durable. The same happened Tuesday night with the club ZC campaign. I haven't read the rules myself and am fairly sure we were doing it right but it does initially seem a bit strong.

Admittedly without our super-charged Z-Boys we would have been guaranteed zombie-chow and otherwise couldn't have touched the Abo. I can see the fluff point that whilst "on the turn" you might go all roid-tastic but I'm not so sure the rest of the party wouldn't be a touch wary of their newly resurrected buddies.
But hey, its a Zom-pocalypse..........and a game :) Good fun!!

Ruining Games with Maths since 1978

Evening people,

Bit of a tongue in cheek one tonight, which probably isn't too much of a shock. Last night at Enfield Gamers Rich C, aka Shado, kicked off his idea for a rolling  Zombiecide campaign. Basically there's 30 scenarios and 25 survivors, can we make it through?

As it had been a while we had to knock off a bit of rust and we got a few bits wrong but nothing major as we successfully shuffled through the first two scenarios. Main issue was forgetting to to take all of the restricted weapons from the items deck (combined from all three box sets) allowing us to blow away two Abominations far too easily. We spawned the first one almost immediately and that initial panic attack was all too easily dispelled.

As a co-operative game it's important to co-ordinate the group's actions but it did end up running to an extreme with Mr C and Shado forming an impromptu statistical analysis committee to the eventual barracking of the rest of us, "play the GAME!!" and "you're ruining the GAME with maths".

Rather amusingly Scenario 2 quite literally bit back at Mr C. Having carefully calculated a safe point for himself a flurry of zombie bonus action cards saw him in deep trouble. Rob jumped in to the rescue but luck just wasn't with them and another set of bonus action cards saw them chewed up and spit out!
28 missions remaining, 23 survivors!

For further context and hilarity the evening's entertainment came on the back of myself and Mr C having a number of nerdy STAW conversations about fleet lists. The first was how to defeat the Fed Anti-Proton Mine list, it was sort of impressive to see how "focused" he became.

The second was use of the Flagship card, which I have to admit was down to me. To get the best use you might want to put them on a small, cheap ship with high agility, the RIS Vo for example (8 defence dice when cloaked). Hmm that's impressive so what could you have it deliver offensively? Nuclear Warheads or Additional Weapons Array. Not bad, especially with points left over for two Valdores with Counter-Attack.

See! It's a slippery slope and all too easily done. That's where it got left it for me, don't do maths-hammer, but Mr C became "focused" on whether he would be better off with the Romulan Flagship for re-roll on attacks or the Independent Flaghip for +1 attack. To work it out he put together a scarily impressive EXCEL spreadsheet to work it our and mailed it round to a few of us.

All this after admitting the on the Facebook Big Bang Theory character test he came up as Wolawitz as the first thing he'd do with a new game is flick to the "how to win" section!

His signature,....Ruining games with maths since 1978! Had to chuckle :)

Mutant Chronicles??

Hello people,

Back from the wonders of the week-long work training course this pile of shrink-wrapped geek-goodness was waiting for me. It's about bloody time as there were some "issues" with delivery resulting in a re-send, direct from the States thus incurring Import Duty, and a previously un-mentioned product split. Annoying but at least it's here, unlike Heroes of Normandie which is delayed further than the second front it represents!

Tomorrow night a few of us are getting together round at Rich's for another run-out with Firefly before heading down to TTN on Sunday for their most recent ST-AW Organised Play event. So, this seems like the post to expand my recent musing about "hybrid board-games" (Rich J's phrase), especially given GW's 25% share-price nose-dive following the announcing of their half year financial, though I appreciate that this is a relatively tenuous link.

Meanwhile, back in the room, the thought process works something like this;
- "Traditional" wargames take a lot of time and effort to get going, building and painting armies, scenery etc
- For new gamers this can be something of a barrier, though naive enthusiasm usually sees them through
- Veteran gamers, or at least the ones in my group, tend to have time as their most limited resource, as demonstrated by the number of abandoned projects that litter the bits boxes
- Wargamers are all about the toys, the figures. We tend to be somewhat disparaging towards "pure" boardgames and those that play them. Where's the "hobby" in that we ask?
- Boardgames with "proper" figures are apparently far more acceptable, they scratch the required itch. Thus the rise of the Hybrid-Boardgame

The Hybrid-Boardgame has a number of major selling points; 

- Everything you need to play the game comes in the box, it's (potentially) a self contained project

- You can get to playing the actual game very quickly

- There is still the possibility / necessity for figure painting

- The game tends to play quickly, 2hr max making campaigns far quicker

- The games themselves are well crafted being fast, fun, furious and even true to period / genre

- Less of an investment in respect of both time and, often, money

For myself, my apparent conversion has snuck up on me somewhat, starting with Blood-Bowl and Space Hulk whilst still playing 40K and Fantasy as my main games. I suppose that as my gaming has moved towards skirmish then its become less of a leap to make. The important point here is that I'm not complaining, I'm more than happy to be a Hybrid-Boardgamer!

As much as I'm still not a fan of pre-paints, painting my own figures is a big part of "my" hobby, the figures themselves have improved no end in terms of sculpt quality, material and re-paint potential, just look at the Zombiecide offerings! Speaking of ZC the rise of the Hybrid-Boardgame seems intrinsically linked to the rise of KickStarter within the hobby. The nature of Hybrid-Boardgames lend themselves to KS particularly well to the point of being almost self funding, they form Mantic's entire business strategy, and in some cases an apparent license to print money.

The offerings available have simply exploded over the past 18 months or so. Dreadball, Deadzone, Mars Attacks, Kingdom Death, Descent, Hero-Quest, Incursion, Dust Tactics to name but a few. Then you've got X-Wing, Attack Wing and Wings of War as various birds of feather competing for our Geek time and money. How about Spartan's Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armarda and Dystopian War, tha tmuch different?

So is this doing real damage to the 6"x4" plus wargames community? GW's aparrent woes are likely far too circumstantial but the rise of KS and it's effects on the wider community have been well documented. Plenty of hobby wedge is being hoovered up in this manner and there is surely only a certain amount to go around. We've certainly noticed an effect in and around the club.

A bit like Marmite the reaction seems to be love or hate but whichever camp you're in I'm sure the Hybrid Boardgame is not only here to stay but likely to keep growing. The question is where and when is the saturation point?

Alive and KICKing

Afternoon people,

After a period of personal, and possibly global, Kickstarter apathy a couple of recent offerings have prised open my wallet with relative ease. Definitley something of an achievement let me tell you!

First up is the one you're more likely to be aware of, Heroquest 25th Anniversary  Just like when GW splash released Space Hulk I caved within a few hours on this one. Should I ever maange to produce any Oddleg offspring htey're definately going to have Dad inflict this one upon them, along with Space hulk and Dreadball!

All resin and plenty of high quality pieces this a huge Fantasy roleplay resource, even more than Space Hulk for Sci-Fi. Unfortunately an IP dispute has suspended things for the moment but fingers crossed everything will be sorted without too many issues.

The second is Metal Made Flesh a set of Bladerunner-esque graphic novels. A setting that really floats my sci-fi boat and likely to provide a great deal of inspisration for Star Wars EotE when it kicks off in the New Year.

Currently I'm in for the set of three graphic for £25, pretty much a 3 for 2, and have been upgraded to a combined hardback. Looking forward to this one turnign up BIG TIME.

They were at Comic Con but somehow I must have missed them. With shades of 2000AD and Aeon Fluxx i'm all over it now. Well worth a look!

Elsewhere Zombiecide is still MIA with a couple of messages unanswered somewhat frustrating :/

I had been thinking about how to paint so many zombies, thinking about a white undercoat and washes, and then saw what Carmen has been doing over on his BLOG. Excellent stuff he never fails to inspire!

To round things out I've been getting very tempted to pick up a Klingon fleet for Attack Wing. I've suddenly got a few quid in the PayPal account burning a virtual hole. Mr C also has one of the special event ships that I might just have to "borrow" on a semi-permanent basis ;)

Live long and eat Gagh!

Kicking it up a notch

Last couple of hours of the Zombicide Season II KickStarter and time to put my money where my mouth is. Not only my moola as Mr C (housemate / landlord / fellow nerd) has gone in halves. We've upgraded to Fugitive for a full copy of both Prison Outbreak and Toxic City Mall along with a set of Season 1 tiles and most of the optional survivors.

Finishing up at $285 (£190) we get the following list of swag;
- 138 zombies
- 20 zombie dogs
- 30 survivors
- 6 doggie companions
That's a feck load of painting come September!

Playing with some stats the KS, at time of typing, took $2.2M with 8800 backers. That's a rough average of $250 per backer. With most backers, 5800, also going for Fugitive that's $100 of extras, inc P+P.
No real comment on the KickStarter business model just some observations :)

Tracking a couple of Season 1 extras on E-Bay, Dave the Geek is on £40 and El Cholo on £50 with six days still to go. That's something of a secondary market which may not be so strong this time round but who knows. We were tempted to go complete set and sell a few but that's just a bit wrong. We're just geeks at the end of the day.

£95 each feels like a lot to throw at a board-game but we can get lots of cross-over use for roleplay any urban gaming of a slightly bloody nature etc etc. Mr C made a very good point that it's a fraction of the price of a 40K or Fantasy army, probably the same for PP, and that's an army not the whole package!

Anyway, between Dreadball and Zombicide I'm likely done for the year.......dependant on SALUTE :)

Kick Me

So I've finally managed to have a nibble at the bullet and back my first KickStarter in the shape of Zombiecide 2.

After my previous wranglings I went in at Inmate level for $100 on the basis that with rapidly falling stretch goals I was getting a feck load that I'd be more than happy with. Being a complete KS noob I wasn't actually aware of the whole pledge manager bit which makes a great deal of sense.

It also allows for what I now refer to as Pledge-Drift.......

As a pledgee I've been recieving almost daily e-mails as further stretch goals have fallen, very quickly I've become almost expectant of getting more and more for my money.

I've also very quickly started racking up a number of optional extras that I'd like to add So far I'm looking at adding all of the additional survivors, Fred, Dakota, Lea and Rick.

Adding a set of Seasson 1 tiles seems like a no-brainer (sorry ;p) as it would be easy to get hold of a copy of the Season 1 rules and for a tenner how could I loose going for the Toxic Mall tiles on top?

That's an extra $80, almost double, with another 22 days to go. I'm still getting a really good deal and the extras are OPTIONAL after all but is my extra spend being influenced by the stretch goal freebies? Surely it's not unfair for me to indirectly pay for all those extras.

I was a GW manager for 6 years so I know the sales model very well.

Don't get me wrong this isn't a whinge, just some commentary from a KS noob. I get the feeling that my experience may be being skewed by a horrificly successful campaign but that seems to be a regular event with this industries KS campaigns.

As such I feel that I can experience the point that this may not be such a great thing for such a niche industry, is it sustainable? I'm getting more so I spend more to get yet again more. As a result I'll be spending, painting  and playing less elsewhere.

Not unhappy, still gonna pledge and carry off my loot. Does that make me / us part of the issue / problem? Just saying

Mice and Men

Who's a pretty boy?

Been busy in the real world so no brush-time, or games actually, so far this week, hopefully tomorrow.

Now that I've re-established myself somewhat, hobby-wise, I've been looking at what I want to be doing for the next little while, I was going to use the phrase "set my goals" but this is toys after all :)

Prior to the break SAGA and Muskets & Tomahawks were the priority. Not so much scope for that at the mo but still something I'd like to get to sometime this year.

Dreadball has got my hobby mojo going again. The league / tourney days have been good fun and given me deadlines to paint to which is always helpful. Going to take my Orx in a new club league with the objective of learning how to play with them better.

I still have the Forge Fathers Veermyn and a couple of MVPs to get painted up, which WILL happen, just need to sort out schemes plus I have the Dark Heresy roleplay figures for some variety.

Finally joining the revolution I've actually fronted up some Kickstarter money. This is for Dreadball Season II, tagging onto the club's previous pledging, and so going for something proven that I'm already involved with, made a commitment to and getting a return from, rather than going out on a limb, which is still how I see it but that's just me.

Being relatively restrained I've gone for the Robot and Z'zor teams, as something properly different along with some MVPs to boost them, plus Buzzcut for my Orx, the Cheerleaders and the Season II rulebook. At just under £60 I'm more than happy with what I'll be getting.

REALLY keen on The Nameless but I'll chuck some money at them when the obligatory Season III drive kicks in :) Not like I don't have enough to keep me busy until then.

Just this evening I've clocked onto the Zombiecide Season II Kickstarter as well. As I've previously bleated I missed out on the original much to my chagrin. I could go super full-bore and pick up EVERYTHING but as you may have noticed that's not my preference.

Will leave the original as WE already have Shaun's copy available. Will be going in with Prison Outbreak as it's a standalone. Will definitely be adding on the Zombie Dogz but not sure about tagging on Toxic City Mall.


This, at £66.50 or.....

.....a bit more for £100

Still being a bit cautious about these thing Inmate seems like plenty, especially with the stretch goals already hit and those likely to fall in the future. But that's thinking about it like a monthly purchase, stick on the never never and I can spread everything out. Interestingly between Dreadball and Zombiecide that's a minimum of three / four month's spending and upto twice that in available hobby time accounted for. I was thinking about an Antares rulebook and a full set of Hasslefree's White Ops......but they won't be happening for a while...for various reasons :)  I can see the point's that some smaller figure producers have been making. Furhtermore it's notable that I'm investing in Boardgames rather than Wargames, though the zombies and survivors feed into St Peytersburg 1990........eventually!!



Braaiinnnsssss II

Tuesday night down at the Enfield Gamer seven of us congregated around missions 2 and 3 of  Zombiecide! Seven of us because Charlie particularly enjoys playing as our resident Zombie-Master.

With several of us having spent some time reading through the rules Charlie's experience was massively enhanced as many more of his charges took to the board.

Mission 2 is simply to get one survivor to escape. Early doors we "activated" the top third of the board to bring out plenty of Zeds including an Abomination.............. ARSE!



This was quickly compounded by one of our number, who was rather well equipped  "biting the big one" whilst half of our number were running around with frying pans!

Feeling under pressure I decided to try something of a suicide run. My chaps "Slippery" ability allows him to step away from Zed populated tile particularly easily so I gave it a go. I needed no runner Zeds or any other random events to turn up and thankfully this was the turn of events.

Exit effected whilst the other guys holed up......a technical victory!




Mission 3 was "simply" to get one of the survivors to RED threat level for a full turn, that's 47 points of kills and 5 point objectives. I had the roller-girl so that was the co-op plan, I run round and pick up everything.

We also had CARS, two cop and a pimp-mobile. We did wonder about driving them round Ben-Hur style but got mobbed the moment we went near one so gave that up pretty quick. We also found ourselves an Abomination almost as quickly. Thankfully we also sorted out a couple of Molotovs on the run and got the Zeds to bunch up nicely a couple of times.

The rest of the boys cut me a path and "herded" the Zed-pods towards their fiery end.

Whilst I racked up the kills one amongst us, Mr Christian, failed to pick up a single kill. Looking for redemption he charged in at the last, rolled poorly and "bit the big one".

Another good nights Z-gaming. The more I play this one the more I wish I had got in on the Kickstarter. Somewhat aptly Amazon sent me an e-mail overnight suggesting it as my next purchase from them.............tempting!

Brainnnsssss

This week at Enfield Gamers Shaun let on that he'd had a copy of Zombiecide sat in the boot of his car since last November. So quick as Rob could rip off the cellophane we had Charlie devour the rulebook and run the zombies whilst six of us picked a random character.

I got Wanda whose starting ability is to move two zones per action courtesy of her roller-skates. Unsurprisingly each character has a different set of abilities gaining further abilities as you rack up the experience points by picking up objectives and braining zombies (sorry.....ish ;) )

Vaguely scarily we quite sensibly played through the two-tile tutorial (wtf?) which was somewhat unnecessary as the mechanics are simple and self explanatory.

We weren't entirely sure how many times you could search a room, crucial as you start with zero equipment but were sure there's a FAQ out there somewhere.

 Moving straight onto Mission #1 we upgraded to nine tiles and deployed into the centre building. The mission was to hit the objectives in the corners, find water, rice and canned meat (chilli night?) and then escape the board.

 

Zombies spawn randomly from a card deck which also kicks out a few random events. The game really is a co-operative effort, split the party at your peril! What really interested me was the player sequence.

 

Once you work out who goes first they get a "first activation" chit which then moves round at the end of the turn. As such player activation is staggered and you really have to think through to plan and co-ordinate actions. Working things out on the fly gets interesting quick!

 

 

Latter stages and as the kills piled up so the horde grew. Early doors we didn't feel threatened but there was an entertaining build up of tension. Walkers and Runners are easy kills but Fatties are less so whilst Abominations are definite beasts!

 

Fewer weapons have the ability to take down the Fatties and even less the Abominations. Come up against these guys without the right kit and you'll suddenly be scrambling around to find something real quick whilst avoiding the horde.

Luckily we found a Molotov Cocktail just after the Big A appeared and lucked out a bit with his positioning to fry him up real good followed by a final run for the exit.

 

No casualties, no wounds at all but then there were six of us and it's Mission #1. Definitely keen to try a few more. On thing for sure, it's definitely required to engage your gray matter! :)